A “proclamation” by businessman D.H. MacKinnon, ran in the December 14, 1870 edition of The Herald, proclaiming a change in the name of Great George Street to Broadway.

“Considering that all the Great Georges have passed from the scene of action, Little Georges being exempt from such honors, on account of inability, shall henceforth pass into obscurity, like all their ancestors…” is a great line.

Longtime readers may recall that last May I happened upon a storefront in Berlin called I Like Paper that specialises in custom-printed items made of Tyvek.

This fall, with some sketches in-hand, I decided to order something from them. Using their web-based tool, which has a slightly-more-than-comfortable learning curve, but which is quite capable, I uploaded a sketch of a sunflower I made this summer, and chose to have it printed on a large pencil case. Cost was €15.95 plus (nominal) shipping. I placed the order on November 16, 2017 and the package arrived yesterday, November 30; 15 day turnaround from Berlin to Charlottetown for custom printing is about as good as it gets.

I’m very happy with the result: the colours are rich and vibrant, the stitching and the zipper are good-quality, and the Tyvek seems indestructible.

Here’s what it looks like:

A couple of things to realize if you decide to place your own order:

1. Although the website and the ordering tool are available in German, French and English, things switched back to German for me at inconvenient times along the process without explanation, and it would appear, temporarily, as though I’d lost the contents of my shopping cart. I muddled through and it all worked out in the end.
2. It’s not immediately obvious that the custom printing is on both sides of whatever object–pencil case, wallet, etc.–you choose. I was pleasantly surprised by this.

If you happen to be in Berlin in person, drop in and see their shop: they’re at Reichenberger Str. 116, in the heart of an interesting neighbourhood.

What the world would look like if I were a cat.

Last May I was in London for the St Bride Foundation Wayzgoose, and I snapped a photo of St Bride’s Church while in the neighbourhood.

Earlier this week I came across that photo, and thought it a good basis for an after-the-fact sketch in pen.

This is what resulted:

My favourite part of the sketch, other than mostly getting the wedding-cake-like spire satisfyingly reasonable, is the bird that I’d not seen until I zoomed in, flying right by the tip of the spire when I snapped the photo.

The buildings “leaning in” on the sides–a visual artifact of the angle I took the photo at, and the magic of perspective–were tricky, and I did not achieve a level of satisfying reasonableness with them.

And the tress were a little squidgy.

But I like that bird.

When Oliver and I were in Tokyo in 2013, we went shopping for stationery at Ito Ya, and I purchased a couple of packages of Japanese paper squares. They looked like this:

I used the first pack to make the Act Quickly Summer is Almost Over prints that summer, prints I’ve been happy to spot on walls from Malmö to Berlin to Isle Madame in the years since.

I decided to use the second pack for this year’s Christmas card, but decided this time that I needed to learn more about the paper. So I asked my friend Mayumi, who speaks Japanese, to translate for me. Despite having just stepped off a plane from Japan herself, she quickly and helpfully got back to me with this:

Mayumi went on to explain that “Grobei” is a thick Japanese paper, with one side sleek and the other side rough. Which describes the paper in my hand exactly.

There are 10 sheets of 10 varieties of paper in each pack, and each piece of paper is 10 cm by 10 cm  (so 10 x 10 is true in more ways than one). The varieties, while all remaining true to the “one side sleek, the other side rough” rule, run the gamut from stiff card stock printed with very subtle snowflake patterns to almost tissue-paper-like wisps. All were a joy to print on.

One of the vestiges of Myron’s.

There I was, standing on the street chatting with my friend BJ, when a long motorcade of black cars pulled up in front of us.

Shadowy figures emerged from the front and rear vehicles and spoke into their lapels while scanning we bystanders carefully.

After a few moments, the door on the middle car opened anh the Prime Minister stepped out, gave a wave, and was spirited into the shipping entrance of the Confederation Centre of the Arts.

See also, Billy Joel in Moscow in 1987 singing Pressure.

I’ve been meaning to move the summer things into the back shed for the last month; my procrastinating was finally overtaken by the first snow.

Saturday is supposed to be 10°C and sunny, so I may get a reprieve.